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rORY OF and SUGGESTIONS IN 


1 The Making of 


BISCUITS, QUICK BREADS 

and CAKE 


For Use in Classroom — Extension Work — Womens Clubs 




CONTENTS 

stn 

Culinary Art 

Its exemplification 

A Seed Cake 

Its leavening 

The Method of Mistress 

Mary Randolph 

Early Powders 
for Leavening 

Baking-Powder of 
To-day, etc., etc. 

Skill in Flour 

Skill in Mixing 

Making of Meat 
Pies 


HE ART of Cake, 
Biscuit, and Bread 
Making passed through 
an Age of infancy and 
did not arrive at its 
Present Maturity but by 
slow degrees, various 
experiments, and a long 
period of time. In all 
Culinary Art skill as 
well as Suitable Mate¬ 
rials is a most Essential 
Element. 





Nf.w York, N . Y., Printed for Claudia Quigley Murphy, 41 Union 
Square West , in the City of New York, ^The DeVinne Press,/// 1921 











Copyright, 1921, by 
Claudia Quigley Murphy 
New York 


g)Cl A627780 


NUV ib ly^l 





.A* 


The Making of 


BISCUITS, QUICK BREADS, and CAKE 


T HE making of snowy biscuits, tasty waffles, and delicious 
cakes is an art that registers high in the appreciation of 
mankind, for it is the expression of the culinary skill which 
is, after all, the reflection of the civilization and the culture of a 
people. 

Culinary art, as it stands to-day, is the result of continued effort 
by careful cooks and pastry makers of the past three centuries. 
Emerging from feudal days, from the heavy walls and battlements 
of the people of that period, there came, as the amenities of life 
advanced, an expression of hospitality in terms of better foods and 
careful service. Not a gluttonous age, as in the days of Rome at 
its worst, 

When Lucullus, they say, 

Forty cooks had each day, 

but an age that was developing a nicety in table service as well as 
a finer and more delicate rendering of the art of cookery. 

Bread has been and perhaps always will be the outstanding evi¬ 
dence of our civilization; so bread making for many years was the 
foundation for cake making, and cake and tea-biscuit making the 
topping evidence of the gentle art of cookery. 

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cake was merely 
bread dough, yeast raised, enriched with eggs, sugar, and fruit added. 
When flavor was used it was either of fruit, wine, or brandy, or some 
sort of flavoring compound. The cake was a mixture of bread dough 
containing 

Sugar and spice 
And everything nice. 

It had considerable bulk, for it usually was made by the peck, and 
when done frequently weighed from three to five pounds; it required 


4 


The Making of BISCUITS 


many hours in preparation, for there were no easy methods in cake 
making in those days. Frequently three hours were spent in blend¬ 
ing the sugar, which came in chunks, with the butter in the cold 
windy kitchens of the early days. 

To beat the great mass of eggs required in the production of the 
cake was no small task, for two dozen eggs were none too many to 
lighten the batter to a consistency suitable for producing cake. So 
cake making was an event of some importance in those days, even 
in the days of an abundance of domestic help. Frequently a day was 
spent by several people in its preparation, and many hours were nec¬ 
essary for the baking. 

Midway in the seventeenth century, Gervase Markham, in his 
book of “Country Contentments,” put down these definite require¬ 
ments for a good cook: 

“First she must be cleanly, both in body and garments; she 
mlist have a quick eye f a curious nose, a perfect taste, and a 
ready ear: She must not be butter-fingered, sweet-toothed, nor 
faint-hearted; for the first will let everything fall, the second 
eats too much, and the last loses time with fussiness” 

A popular cake for the banquet and feasts of the colorful period 
of Elizabeth and her household was 

A Good Seed Cake 

“Herein are the procedures and ingredients: take five pounds 
of fine flour, well dried, and four pounds of single-refined sugar, 
beaten and sifted; mix the sugar and flour together and sift 
through a hair sieve; then wash four pounds of butter in eight 
spoonfuls of rose or orange flour water; you must work the 
butter with your hand till it is like cream; beat twenty eggs, half 
the whites, and put to them six spoonfuls of sack; then put in 
your flour a little at a time, keeping stirring with your hand all 
the time; you must not begin mixing it till the oven is almost 
hot; you must let it lie a little while before you put your cake 
into the hoop; when you are ready to put it into the oven, put 
into it eight ounces of candied orange peel sliced, and as much 
citron, and a pound and a half of caraway comfits; mix all well 




QUICK BREADS and CAKES 


5 


together and put into the hoop, which must he prepared at hot-' 
tom, and buttered, the oven must he quick; it will take two or 
three hours’ baking. You may ice it if you please” 

(< Housewife’s Companion,” 1790. 

Here eggs doubtless served the very definite purpose of a leaven¬ 
ing agent to lighten the batter and so produce the desired light and 
flavory texture required in cake. 

As commerce extended over the seas to the fast-growing colonies 
of east and west, wealth increased, and with it came finer living ex¬ 
pressed in choice food and greater and finer type of table settings 
and furnishings; so, too, cake making became more than a sweeten¬ 
ing of dough or an enriching of bread batters. It was discovered 
that, eggs added, the nicer and lighter was the cake, the tastier and 
more delicious the product. Eggs w 7 ere cheap then, so in the favored 
cake of that period it was common to use from twenty to thirty-six 
eggs; for the egg served as a leavener of the cake. For this much 
seems true, the use of eggs in a cake is requisite to lightness and fine 
texture as well as to flavor. 

Standards of living in the eighteenth century were considerably 
advanced over those of the preceding years. Travel was more 
easily accomplished, for going was better, so with the increased 
wealth of the people came added visiting among groups of friends, 
relations, and acquaintances. Meals began to be something more 
than a mere effort to satisfy hunger, and served as a social and 
frequently a political function; so, choice qualities of food were de¬ 
veloped and the making of light small breads or biscuits and rich 
flavory cakes—large, small, and layer—became one of the favored 
tokens of good living. Here begins the use of a pleasant expression 
of table life in that period, for to say “They eat well” indicated in 
no small degree the family’s high social standards. 

In many of the old cookery books we constantly meet the phrases 
“Skill in cookery,” “Skill in choosing flour,” “Skill in blending 
flavors,” “Skill in mixing ingredients,” and skill there must be in 
these same items to-day if successful cookery is to be secured. The 
first cakes then were merely sweetened bread—dough, eggs, spice, 
and perhaps fruit and some flavor added. Some expert cake makers 



6 


The Making of BISCUITS 


found that a more generous use of eggs gave a lighter and whiter 
cake; omitting the yolks added whiteness and perhaps lightness. 

The first of the leavenings introduced to supplant yeast was pearl- 
ash, which makes its appearance in receipts early in the nineteenth 
century. In “New American Cookery,” by an “American lady,” 
published in New York in 1805, appears Honey Cake, in which two 
teaspoons of pearlash are used. 

Mistress Mary Randolph, in 1828, wrote “The Virginia House¬ 
wife” with the slogan “Method is the soul of Management,” and 
published it in 1828. In her preface she w T rites: 

“Management is an art that may be acquired by every woman 
of good sense and tolerable memory. lf } perchance, she has 
been bred in a family where domestic business is the work of 
chance, she will have many difficulties to encounter; but a deter¬ 
mined resolution to obtain this valuable knowledge will enable 
her to surmount all obstacles. She must begin the day with an 
early breakfast, requiring each person to be in readiness to take 
their seats when the muffins, buckwheat cakes, etc., arc placed 
on the table. This looks social and comfor table. 

And social and comfortable it reads. Mistress Randolph uses 
pearlash—three teaspoons dissolved in a cup of water—in her 
“Plebeian Ginger Bread.” j 

Miss Leslie, of Philadelphia, for so her signature always reads, 
published her book of Seventy-five Receipts in 1827 in Boston. Pearl¬ 
ash is a requisite for many of her cakes. In Miss Leslie’s Dover 
Cake she dissolves her half-teaspoon of pearlash required in a little 
vinegar, and says, “The pearlash will give it a dark color.” In 
her book, some thirty years later, bicarbonate of soda appears as a 
leavening agent, which she sometimes calls “sub-carbonate of soda.” 

In the sixties cream of tartar and soda was the popular leavening 
for cakes and tea biscuits; waffles and receipts for muffins appear in 
constantly increasing numbers, giving evidence of their popularity 
and tastiness. 

Unquestionably baking-powder was produced as the result of a 
demand for a convenient leavening powder that could be used with 
sweet milk or water and that would produce a nice, fine-grained,- 




QUICK BREADS and CAKES 


7 


sweet-tasting, and tender white cake or white biscuit, for the soda- 
made product required sour milk or buttermilk, and, unless great 
care was exercised, not only lacked the proper leavening but was too 
yellow in appearance and brackish in flavor, “that soda taste,” as it 
was described. Baking-powder, proportioned carefully by skilled 
chemists, entirely does away with these disagreeable results. So 
entered baking-powder, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
a product which has added greatly to the palatability of our foods, 
and because of this has revolutionized our cookery. 

Baking-powder brought in its box much good eating, such as 
delicious biscuit for tea or breakfast, for luncheon or dinner; the 
light, fluffy dumpling, to add to the savory veal or lamb stew; the 
hot waffle, rich and tasty with or without fried chicken or veal cut¬ 
lets; the colorful, tasteful, and appetizing pancake; the poppy pop- 
over; the attractive and tasty muffins and gems for early or late 
breakfast, and finally a whole range of choice cakes, cookies, and 
pastries,—all these in the can of baking-powder—a very definite rea¬ 
son for its preference and popularity. 

Many words have been written, many speeches made, concerning 
baking-powder and its action; the real thing to be sought is a strong, 
steady powder, not only quick in action but steadily on the job during 
the baking process. What makes the wheels go round is as legiti¬ 
mate a question to age and experience as it is to youth. What 
atom-unit promotes the rise in the batter when baking-powder en¬ 
ters is deserving of investigation. Here is a most interesting hy¬ 
pothesis presented after careful examination by an experienced 
observer. 

“While eggs do not themselves aerate the dough, yet, owing to 
the peculiar glairy consistency of their whites, they materially assist 
in retaining the air introduced in mixing the dough, and as the white 
of egg coagulates at baking temperature, the little ‘balloons’ of ex¬ 
panded air are retained and the dough is thus lightened.” During 
the past fifty years, baking-powder has been developed to produce 
leavening or aeration by the evolution of a harmless gas in the dough, 
and useful purposes in reducing the number of eggs required in cake 
making and giving a finer texture and flavor. But eggs are still 
essential to lightness, fine texture, and flavor. In some baking- 
powders white of egg in powdered form is included, thus combining 



8 The Making o/ BISCUITS 


the more efficient leavening power of baking-powder with the peculiar! 
quality of eggs to retain and more evenly distribute the leavening gas. 

An interesting subject surely and certainly of value, but to the 
average man or woman “the proof of the pudding is in the eating, 
for the test of the baking-powder is finally in the light, flavory, 
tender, and tasty product. The baking-powder that produces good 
biscuits and waffles, cake or muffins that eat well and are tasty, light, 
and tender justifies its use in no uncertain manner. 

Skill in Flour 

S KILL in the choice and handling of flour is a matter not only 
of information but of experience, for flour even at best is a con¬ 
stantly varying substance, never twice identical, always subject to the 
variations of the wheat from which it is made. 

Flour being the principal ingredient in making bread, biscuits, 
cakes, or pies, it is important that it must be selected with care and 
used with skill as well as eyed with all the available experience. 1 he 
only safe way, not only for cookery safety but for health preserva¬ 
tion, is to avoid mixtures of uncertain origin or unknown in¬ 
gredients sold under the name of self-rising flour, for in truth there 
is no such thing. When it is self-rising, it isn’t flour; it is a com¬ 
pound of many things under a fanciful name, so the safest way is to 
avoid it for these reasons: 

The proportions of flour and baking-powder, or any other leaven¬ 
ing agent to be used in cookery, are very different, depending on the 
consistency of the batter, the way it is to be cooked—whether boiled, 
baked, or done in hot fats; each requires a different amount. Again, 
the best flour is none too good for family use. It is not possible to 
control the kind or quality of flour put into ready mixed packages; 
flour might be of very low grade, quite deficient in vital elements, 
and yet be flour, so on that score it is not wise to use unknown flour; 
then, too, the leavening agent frequently becomes inert through nat¬ 
ural causes, such as heat, moisture or humidity, and so it is re¬ 
charged, dosed again and perhaps again, with the so-called baking- 
powder, which naturally cumulates in the flour and changes a benign 
product to a questionable element. To repeat, there must be care 
in the use of baking-powder to insure good food, for all receipts 




QUICK BREADS and CAKES 


9 


cannot be written to one standard of leavening. Dumplings require 
one quantity, pancakes another, and baking-powder biscuits insist on 
another. So also with cakes. Loaf cakes have one requirement of 
baking-powder, layer cakes another, and cookies yet another; so 
there is no safety in baking unless the baking-powder be freshly in¬ 
serted in the required quantity into the flour, sifted in and sifted 
again, and the other ingredients added in their due place. 

There is a real need for the manufacture and sale of baking- 
powder, because the housewife cannot accurately proportion the in¬ 
gredients. There is certainly no need for the manufacture of self¬ 
rising flour, for she can mix and proportion baking-powder with the 
flour more efficiently for her varied needs than can any manufacturer. 


Skill in Mixing 


T HE manipulation of butter and sugar is always important, and 
there is opportunity here for fine skill. One of the choice 
secrets of good cake makers is to wash the salt out of the butter and 
wash into the butter the flavoring desired; when rose water is used 
add just a touch of vinegar, it creates a charming and delicious blend. 

First of all see that the oven is on the way to readiness, so that 
when the mixture is ready the oven will be at just the right tem¬ 
perature to do its part in properly baking the product; so start the 
heat for the oven. 

Have ready your measures, your flour at hand (soft winter wheat 
flour makes a more tender product), butter ready, and sugar con¬ 
venient—an earthen mixing bowl is best. Count out the eggs re¬ 
quired and have an extra glass for breaking them into, lest a bad 
one present itself and so contaminate the mass. Have baking- 
powder present and see that the can has sufficient quantity for the 
desired work. 

Marshal your products in the order of their use, the dry in¬ 
gredients thoroughly sifted, mixed, and blended ready to be put into 
the liquid, or vice versa, as the product requires. 

In beating eggs, beat to lightness, and, in fine baking, whites and 
yolks separately. A drop of lemon-juice hastens the desired stiffness 
in egg whites, and gives hint of flavor that is delightful. 




IO The Making of BISCUITS 


The oven temperature is very important. A quick oven for bis¬ 
cuits, muffins, pop-overs, and layer cakes; a hot oven for sponge¬ 
cakes; a slow oven with steady heat for the serious task of baking a 
fruit cake or rich loaf cake. 

Meat Pies 

I N these days of excessive costs, meat pies will do much to lessen 
the butcher bills and give sufficient and satisfying food to any 
family. Make the coffin or shell of the meat pie of baking-powder 
crust, line the dish bottom and sides, and set in the oven and bake. 
Have your meat stewed or cooked, and sufficient water or gravy to 
give enough liquid; put in coffin or shell, put fresh crust over, and 
bake. 

The directions for preparing can be found in any cookery book, 
but the ingenuity of the housewife will need no suggestions for using 
it as an envelope for choice and dainty bits of meat and vegetables, 
too little to serve alone, but, combined, sufficient for the family dinner 
or lunch, a savory pie full of appetizing food. 

Among the pies most popular which can be made for individual 
use or large size for the family are 

Mutton Pies 
Veal Pies 

Fish Pies * 

Lamb Pies 

Chicken Pies 
Oyster Pies 

Not overlooking Sam JTeller's Veal and Ham Pie, so temptingly 
discussed in “Pickwick Papers,” and so palatably offered in the ad¬ 
mired housekeeping of yesterday. The key to success in the prepara¬ 
tion of meat pies is in the tenderness of the meat and the rich tasty 
flavor of the gravy, or cullis, as it was then called. The vegetables 
were diced or sliced and previously cooked, the whole marshaled into 
the crusty, light and flaky coffin, or shell, which was previously baked, 
then topped with the remaining crust, and the whole finished to a 
rich golden brown. 




Fillings 


Variations 


The Batter 


Fig Filling 


THE MASTER CAKE 


y 2 lb. chopped figs 
y 3 cup sugar 
% cup boiling wa¬ 
ter 

i tablespoon lemon 
juice 

Cocoanut Filling 

Whites 2 eggs 
beaten till stiff, add 
powdered sugar to 
spread, sprinkle 
with shredded co¬ 
coanut, spread on 
top and between 
layers. 

Jelly Filling 

Spread jelly—cur¬ 
rant or other fruit 
—between layers. 

Cocoa Filling 

6 tablespoons co¬ 
coa 

1 cup sugar 
y 2 teaspoon salt 
y 2 cup milk 

2 tablespoons but¬ 
ter 

y 2 teaspoon vanilla 

Cream Filling 

% cup sugar 
y 3 cup flour 
teaspoon salt 
y 2 cup scalded milk 
Yolks 2 eggs 
i teaspoon vanilla 


i scant cup butter 
i /4 cups sugar 

3 eggs, beaten sep¬ 
arately 

i teaspoon lemon 
or vanilla 
i saltspoon mace 
y 2 cup milk 
3 cups pastry flour 
3 level teaspoonsful 
baking-powder 
J/2 teaspoonful salt 


Method 

Separate eggs, cream 
butter and sugar to¬ 
gether, add beaten 
yolks, add milk and 
flavoring extract, add 
flour and white of eggs, 
thoroughly beaten stiff 
alternately. Sift salt 
with flour and baking- 
powder. 

Moderate, rising oven. 


Volume or Product 

2 medium loaves or I 
loaf cake, i layer or 
dozen individual cakes. 



Raisin Cake 
i cup raisins, well 
floured, added to bat¬ 
ter. _ 

Spice Cake 
Cold coffee instead of 
milk, mixed spices to 
taste. _ 

Currant Cake 
i cup currants, well 
floured, added to bat¬ 
ter. _ 

Leopard Cake 
(Yellow or Brown) 

For brown mixture put 
original batter in cup, 
drop enough melted 
chocolate to color 
brown. 

Hickory Nut Cake 
i cup hickory nut 
meats, chopped and 
floured. 

Individual Cakes 
or Luncheon Cakes 
Use small tins, regular 
batter, iced, or any 
above mixtures. 

Domino Cakes 
Use regular batter, 
bake in thin layer, cut 
in domino size, use 
white icing, use choco¬ 
late for domino mark. 


r 


APR 5 19?3 




























librae 



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Published by 

CLAUDIA QUIGLEY MURPHY 

Consultant in 
Home Economics 

41 Union Square West :: New York City 




ADDITIONAL COPIES ON REQUEST 







